Men Explain Things To Me By Rebecca Solnit Summary

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is a writer who focuses on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, and social change. In "Men Explain Things to Me," Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don't, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works. Men explain things to women whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men. According to her, every woman knows what she’s talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence

by indicating, the way harassment in the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported confidence.
About three women a day are murdered by spouses or ex-spouses in the United States. It’s one of the main causes of death for pregnant women in the US. At the heart of the struggle of feminism to give rape, date rape, marital rape, domestic violence, and workplace sexual harassment legal standing as crimes has been the necessity of making women credible and audible. Violence is one way to silence people, deny their voice and their credibility, to assert your right to control over their right to exist. Women acquire the status of human beings when these acts started to be taken seriously, when the big things that stop us and kill us where addressed legally. There is a pattern of violence against women that is broad and deep and horrific and incredible overlooked. Occasionally, a case involving a celebrity or lurid details in a particular case get a lot of attention in in the media, but these cases are treated as something that is out of this world, while there is an abundance of stories like this all around the world. Although virtually all of the perpetrators of such crimes are men, that doesn’t mean all men are violent. Most are not. Men also suffer violence, largely at the hands of other men, every violent death, every assault is terrible. Woman can and do engaged in intimate partner violence, but recent study states that these acts don’t often result in significant injury, let alone death. On the other hand, men murdered by their partners are often killed in self-defense, and intimate violence sends a lot of woman to hospital and to the grave. But the subject here is the pandemic of violence by men against women which can come from both intimate violence and stranger violence. The author wants to make it clear she does not want to pick on men. She thinks that if we notice that women are radically less violent, we might be able to theorize where violence comes from and what we can do about it a lot more productively. Clearly the ready availability of guns is a huge problem in the United States, but despite this availability to everyone, murder is still a crime committed by men 90% of the time.
Rape and other acts of violence, up to and including murder, threats of violence, constitute to the barrage some men laydown as they attempt to control some women.

The fear of that violence limits most women in ways they’ve gotten so used to that they hardly notice and hardly address. The author points out, that there’s no good reason colleges spend more time telling woman how to survive predators than telling the other half of their students not to be predators. This is embedded into our political and legal system, which before feminism didn’t recognize most domestic violence, or sexual harassment and stalking, or date rape, or acquaintance rape, or marital rape, and in cases of rape still often tries the victim instead of the rapist as though only perfect lady could be assaulted or believed. When a woman says something about male misconduct, she is almost always portrayed as delusional, a malicious conspirator, a pathological liar, a whiner who doesn’t recognize it’s all in fun. They are asked questions on their choice of dress or maybe they did something to provoke or encourage this behavior. Solnit used a personal experience where she “objected to the behavior of a man, only to be told that the incidents had not happened at all as she said, that she was being subjective, delusional, overwrought, dishonest and in a nutshell, female” and therefore not a reliable witness for her own life. The truth is not their property now or ever. The implications that women as a

category are unreliable and that false rape charges are the real issue is used to silence individual women and to avoid discussing sexual violence, and to make out men as the principal victims. This does not stop men, especially the ones in the government, from having the presumption that they have a right or claim to dictate women on the rights of her own body. Former senate candidate Richard Mourdock claimed that rape pregnancies “were a gift from God”, therefore abortions shouldn’t be an option for women since there are ways of “preventing” pregnancy in the case of rape from happening. Paul Ryan, who is now the speaker of the House of Representatives in the United States, reintroduced the bill that would give states the right to ban abortions and might even conceivably allow a rapist to sue his victim for having one.
Solnit uses a quote from Betty Friedman’s book, “The Feminine Mystique”, which says “The problem that has no name is simply the fact that American women are being kept from growing to their full human capacities.

It is taking a far greater tool on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease”. In the years that followed, this problem gained several names. These names include sexism, misogyny, inequality and oppression. Another term, which I have never heard, is sexual entitlement. The meaning of this is in the actual name, the idea that you are entitled to sex. Solnit uses a 2013 BBC study on rape in Asia where they concluded that in the many cases that motive rape was the idea that a man has the right to have sex with a woman regardless of her desires. In other words, his rights override the woman’s, or as Solnit questions maybe she doesn’t have any. This ridiculous sense of being owed sex is everywhere. She goes in to detail on how when she was a little girl she was told, like many young girls, that something we did, said, wore or just the way we looked or the fact that were female had excited desires we were obligated to satisfy. We owed them which means they had a right to us. This is what fuels rape culture. Rape culture normalizes these absurd nuances that a woman’s sole purpose is to please a man in every way possible and if she does not want to partake then it’s not the man’s problem because that is her job and she has to do it anyway or

she’ll be forced to. Male fury at not having emotional and sexual needs met is far too common, as is the idea that you can rape or punish one woman to get even for what other women may have or may have not done. Why is that when men do not get their way, especially with a potential love interest, they always react aggressively? This is why we always see news stories of students shooting up schools because his crush did not have the same feelings towards him or why women walk in fear while walking past of group of guys knowing she’s going to get catcalled. A man acts on the belief that you have no right to speak or even deny him or what he wants and that you do not get to define what is going on. That could mean just cutting you off during a conversation or just telling you to shut up, or threatening you if you open your mouth you’ll be punished or just killing you to silence you forever. He could be your husband, your father, your boss, or a complete stranger on the train.
Solnit describes Feminism as an endeavor that is meant to change something very old, widespread, and deeply rooted in many cultures, religions, institutions and in most households over the world and most importantly, in our minds where it all begins and it all ends. These changes take time and while there have been policies and laws put in place to solidify our existence and rights as an equal human being, the only thing we cannot change are people’s minds. While we can try to educate them and try to help them understand our struggles, when someone feels threatened by something that they consider “inferior”, there is not much we can do but continue our fight. While many men believe that feminist are “men haters”, It is simply not true. The thought alone that this movement is about the hatred of men is just feeding into the stereotypes. This movement is beyond that and while men are the main perpetrators in this case, it does not mean all men are sick misogynistic pigs. It is important to note that there are many male feminists that have taken notice of the struggles their grandmothers or mothers have faced or what their future daughters might and are fighting for the same things we are. We are not fighting against men, we are fighting not only for equal pay, or own reproductive rights, we are fighting quite literally for our lives.